Path Traversal in Anthropic Claude Code

CVE-2026-39861

Claude Code is an agentic coding tool. Prior to version 2.1.64, Claude Code's sandbox did not prevent sandboxed processes from creating symlinks pointing to locations outside the workspace. When Claude Code subsequently wrote to a path within such a symlink, its unsandboxed process followed the symlink and wrote to the target location outside the workspace without prompting the user for confirmation. This allowed a sandbox escape where neither the sandboxed command nor the unsandboxed app could independently write outside the workspace, but their combination could write to arbitrary locations, potentially leading to code execution outside the sandbox. Reliably exploiting this required the ability to add untrusted content into a Claude Code context window to trigger sandboxed code execution via prompt injection. Users on standard Claude Code auto-update have received this fix automatically. Users performing manual updates are advised to update to version 2.1.64 or later.

Vulnerability class: Path Traversal (Directory Traversal)

EPSS: 0.007 (51.2th percentile) — read the EPSS interpretation.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 10.0 (Critical). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H.

Affected products

Weakness classification (CWE)

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2026-39861?
CVE-2026-39861 is a critical-severity vulnerability in Anthropic Claude Code, classified under Path Traversal. CVSS score: 10.0/10. Published 2026-04-21.
How severe is CVE-2026-39861?
Critical severity. CVSS v3 base score is 10.0 out of 10.